As Zuckerberg and Company gear up for their big debutante ball, when they'll spend the next two weeks meeting with investors and shopping their stock around, the company has released an estimated price range for the stock. When shares start trading on the 17th or 18th of this month, Facebook execs expect them to go for about $28 to $35 per share. In the middle of that range, that should raise about ten Instagrams for the Menlo Park company, putting it's total value somewhere north of $80 billion.

That number means Facebook is still on track to have the largest Internet IPO on record when it hits the Nasdaq under the "FB" symbol, even though profits were down 12% in the first quarter of 2012. Still, when it finally does go public, expect a lot of drunk Facebook employees stumbling off of Caltrain and heading for the nearest champagne bar.

[NYT]